Quotation marks With most printed Hebrew texts from the early 1970s and before, opening quotation marks are low (as in
German), and closing ones are high, often going above the letters themselves (as opposed to the
gershayim, which is level with the top of letters). An example of this system is . However, this distinction in Hebrew between opening and closing quotation marks has mostly disappeared, and today, quotations are most often punctuated as they are in English (such as ), with both quotation marks high. This is due to the advent of the
Hebrew keyboard layout, which lacks the opening quotation mark 〈„⟩, as well as to the lack in Hebrew of “
smart quotes” in certain word processing programs. In addition, the quotation mark is often used for the similar looking but different
gershayim mark ⟨〉, as that too is absent from the
Hebrew keyboard.
Period, question mark, exclamation mark, comma Periods (
full stops),
question marks,
exclamation marks, and
commas are used as in English. A Hebrew period in a traditional
serif face usually has defined corners (similar to a
diamond). This is also true for other
dots in punctuation, such as in the
question mark and
exclamation mark. In
Arabic, which is also written from right to left, the question mark 〈〉 is mirrored right-to-left from the Latin question mark. (Some browsers may display the character in the previous sentence as a forward question mark due to font or text directionality issues.)
Hebrew is also written right-to-left, but uses a question mark that appears on the page in the same orientation as Latin 〈?〉. Note that Hebrew commas are mirrored – although that was proposed in the 19th century (together with mirrored semi-colons,
capital letters, etc.) by a British minister, William Withers Ewbank.
Colon and '''' Stemming from Biblical Hebrew, a '
〈 〉 is the equivalent of a period, and is used in some writings such as prayer books. Since a ' is absent from the
Hebrew keyboard layout, and looks very similar to the
colon 〈:〉, a colon is often substituted for it.
Vertical bar and paseq The
paseq () 〈〉 originates from Biblical Hebrew. As it is not on a standard
Hebrew keyboard, a
vertical bar 〈|〉 is often used instead. However, it is seldom if ever used in modern Israeli Hebrew, and is not mentioned on the
Academy of the Hebrew Language's guide to modern Hebrew punctuation. The height of the
paseq depends on the font, but it is generally the same as the letter . Like much Biblical Hebrew punctuation, the meaning of the
paseq is not known, although a number of hypotheses exist. The word itself means "separator", but this name was a medieval innovation by later Jews; the root does not exist in the Biblical Hebrew canon.
Wilhelm Gesenius, drawing on Wickes, divided them into five: • as a divider between two words which end and begin with the same letters, e.g. (
Shalom,
ma) • between identical or very similar words, e.g. (the dancer danced) • between words which are to a high degree contradictory, e.g. (
God, evil) • between words otherwise liable to be wrongly connected, e.g. , which prevents the somewhat bizarre phrase (,
spoon) (,
queue) from being wrongly read as (), meaning
button. • "and lastly, between heterogeneous terms, as Eleazar the High Priest, and Joshua" (see context in ) An example may be found in in the Westminster Leningrad Codex and many other manuscripts:
Hyphen and maqaf The '
() 〈〉 is the Hebrew hyphen 〈-〉, and has virtually the same purpose for connecting two words as in English. It is different from the hyphen in its positioning (a hyphen is in the middle in terms of height, the ' is at the top) and it has a biblical origin, unlike many other
Modern Hebrew punctuation symbols, which have simply been imported from European languages. The original purpose of the
maqaf was to show that two words should be considered one for the purpose of
dagesh placement, vowels, stress (
ṭaʿam, ), and
cantillation. This use continues into the present beyond reprintings of Biblical texts; The '
is well-used in Hebrew typography; most books and newspapers use it and have the hyphens higher than one would find in English. In typed documents, however, it is frequently not used because before the 2010s it was absent from most keyboards or cumbersome to type. As a consequence, the common hyphen 〈-〉 is most often used in online writings. This situation can be compared to that of users writing in Latin alphabets using the easily available hyphen-minus 〈-〉 over hyphen 〈‐〉, minus 〈−〉, en dash 〈–〉, and em dash 〈—〉. As of the 2010s, it is possible to insert the ' ⟨־⟩ using most common computer and mobile phone operating systems.
Brackets/parentheses Brackets or parentheses, 〈(〉 and 〈)〉 are the same in Hebrew as in English. Since Hebrew is written from right to left, 〈)〉 becomes an opening bracket, and 〈(〉 a closing bracket, the opposite from English, which is written left to right.
Israeli currency The
shekel sign () is the currency sign for the Israeli currency (the
Israeli new shekel), in the way
$,
£, and
€ exist for other currencies. The shekel sign, like the dollar sign 〈$〉, is usually placed to the left of the number (so '
, rather than '), but since Hebrew is written from right to left, the symbol is actually written after the number. It is either not
separated from the preceding number, or is separated only by a
thin space. Unlike the dollar sign, the new shekel sign is not used that often when handwriting monetary amounts, and is generally replaced by the abbreviation (standing for '''', lit. "new shekel"). The new shekel sign can be typed on desktop Linux and Windows 8 and higher systems using the combination AltGr-4 according to the SI 1452 standard. The short-lived
Israeli old shekel, on the other hand, which had the symbol , is rarely referred to in Israeli texts; both due to its lifespan of only five years and the fact that due to hyperinflation it lost value daily, so that referring to a value in Israeli old shekels, even in retrospective writing, is essentially meaningless without knowing the exact time the figure was quoted. As prices changed so rapidly, advertising of the time predominately used dollars; when the shekel was referred to at all, it was with the letter S or its full Hebrew name—; although certain banks, such as
Bank Leumi, used the letter to refer to it on checks, as well as the Latin letters "I.S." The
Israeli pound was the Israeli currency until 1980. Its sign is I£, and its abbreviation is . The reason for this practice is that it avoids the writing of a symbol "+" that looks like a
Christian cross.
Reversed nun Reversed nun (also called inverted
nun,
nun hafukha, or
nun menuzzeret) is a rare character found in two Biblical Hebrew texts. Other times it appears to look like the letter Z. ==Hebrew points (vowels)==